04 May 2008
It's Been Quite a Year
04/05/08 05:51
Well, it has been a year since we arrived on Vancouver Island. A year since the hurried last minute packing and then the exhausting drive across the country. The time has passed so quickly and there have been so many changes it is hard to know where to start. Of course there are the physical changes; a new country, a new house, new jobs. In addition there has been the general reduction of stress. It's felt like we were holding our breath for the last few years and we've spent the last twelve months exhaling. There are so many things that we don't miss. Being bombarded by news - political and otherwise for example. We sometimes go for days without hearing what is going on. And you know what? That's great. Yes we should be better informed about some things but it's nice to not worry about the tornados somewhere. The same is true of some wildfire in the west, or what some legislator is threatening to do to the University, or who is blowing whom up today somewhere in the world. That doesn't impact our little wooded corner overlooking the sea and we're very happy to ignore most of it. It's better to not have that weighing on our mind.
On the other hand we have missed all of you. E-mail and phone calls are nice but not the same. We are looking forward to seeing as many of you as we can when we're in Minnesota in June. We do know a few people here, Marsha makes friends more quickly than I do, but mostly we're on our own
When you retrench like we did you're bound to make some discoveries, and we certainly have in the last year. First and foremost we found that Marsha is a really good cook. What she makes isn't fancy, but it's been extremely good. She has had to try a couple of recipes more than once to get it exactly right, but even her early experiments have been delicious. She denies it, she hasn't shed her Minnesota modesty after all, but Marsha is really getting to be fairly daring and willing to try things. I am on the other hand am having fun working around the house. I've found that I rather enjoy 'making do'. Because we don't want to run out for every little item we might want, I've been spending more time figuring out how to make things work with what we have. For example, rather than spending $50-$100 on a light for the dining room, we found one at a garage sale for $10. I took the fixture apart and reassembled it in the way I wanted and it looks really good. Being able to spend more time 'being creative' has been a lot of fun.
Work has been...well...different. We do find what the people in charge where we work very amusing in a Keystone Kops/Three Stooges sort of way. I've come to call it Management by Brownian Motion. They try, but between a lack of communication between the people in charge and the way the best people keep abruptly getting reassigned to Panama, or the Philippines, or wherever to solve crises, there is a lack of coherency. Oh and we've come to understand that if Corporate IT (operating out of Horsham PA), tries to do one thing they may or may not screw it up. If they try to do two things at the same time they will without fail, screw up three. It has been a strange few months there.
There are a few oddities we've come across. Zed for example. Up here the last letter of the alphabet is pronounced Zed not Zee. It really messes up the Alphabet Song. Similarly up here it aren't Scouts they are Guides. Every spring there are sales on Girl Guides cookies. Speaking of foodstuffs, in the stores here they have "Low-fat Buttermilk". Ponder that for a few minutes. We have been getting lots of Western Family Brand food products. I don't think we saw WF in Minnesota but out here it's very popular because it's very good quality and cheaper than the name brands. Actually we buy a lot of our food in the bulk aisle. In the stores not only do they have the usual flour and nuts in the bulk aisle, they have other things. Cookie, bread, and muffin mixes, tea bags, and peanut butter, just about everything we are looking for we can find in bulk for a lot less. The bulk items are great because food, especially cheese, is actually rather expensive up here. Not all of our food comes from the store though. Marsha has found she really likes picking things and putting up food for the winter. Rhubarb, blackberries, and apples all were picked packed and frozen for future use. It was the reason the first major purchase we got for the new house was a chest freezer. We are now planning on planting foodstuffs in the yard. Zucchini, squash, cucumbers, and who knows what else. We'll have fun filling the freezer this fall, maybe we'll even try canning some of it. Continuing with the shopping theme, one of the most surprising things we've seen is a place called Zellers. Zellers is just a big box Department Store. When we walked in though, we thought we were at Target. The layout, the color scheme, the feel of the place, the uniforms, all screams Target. But it's Zellers and that means that in addition to the usual clothing, electronics, food, and pharmaceuticals, you can also get a stove or refrigerator.
We have learned that BC is HUGE. BC covers 364,764 square miles. For comparison Texas covers 268,820 square miles and Minnesota covers 87,014 square miles. BC runs all the way up to the Yukon and Alaska. Vancouver Island alone is roughly as long as the distance from Seattle to Eugene, Oregon, or Minneapolis to Milwaukee. We'll be exploring BC for many years to come.
Finally a few random items from around here. One morning it was snowing, no more than what we'd call a shower, and someone at work called it "a blizzard'. It's all in your point of view and Nanaimo doesn't get much snow. Also one day Marsha was shocked to see me go outside to mow the lawn in cut-offs. I never wore shorts in Minnesota, back there I was afraid of the snapping turtles. There also was the time Geiger brought Marsha a present, a nice live snake and then insisted on standing guard over it until Marsha accepted it. She was not amused but I was. Marsha finally picked up Geiger and carried him elsewhere while I rescued the snake and returned it to the blackberry bushes. Lastly this is a land where the garbage-men are finicky as to what they pick up and curbside recycling will take absolutely anything you put out, except that is for clear glass jars. Why? No one seems to know.
So that's what the last year has been like. We laugh more, spend more time doing odd projects, and walk in the park more than we did prior to the move. We'll keep you all in the loop as to new events. We have a few things in mind for the coming year. We're starting to look at the 2009 Eclipse Trip. We're both hunting for other jobs. Mostly though we're just sitting back and enjoying being here and being together.
On the other hand we have missed all of you. E-mail and phone calls are nice but not the same. We are looking forward to seeing as many of you as we can when we're in Minnesota in June. We do know a few people here, Marsha makes friends more quickly than I do, but mostly we're on our own
When you retrench like we did you're bound to make some discoveries, and we certainly have in the last year. First and foremost we found that Marsha is a really good cook. What she makes isn't fancy, but it's been extremely good. She has had to try a couple of recipes more than once to get it exactly right, but even her early experiments have been delicious. She denies it, she hasn't shed her Minnesota modesty after all, but Marsha is really getting to be fairly daring and willing to try things. I am on the other hand am having fun working around the house. I've found that I rather enjoy 'making do'. Because we don't want to run out for every little item we might want, I've been spending more time figuring out how to make things work with what we have. For example, rather than spending $50-$100 on a light for the dining room, we found one at a garage sale for $10. I took the fixture apart and reassembled it in the way I wanted and it looks really good. Being able to spend more time 'being creative' has been a lot of fun.
Work has been...well...different. We do find what the people in charge where we work very amusing in a Keystone Kops/Three Stooges sort of way. I've come to call it Management by Brownian Motion. They try, but between a lack of communication between the people in charge and the way the best people keep abruptly getting reassigned to Panama, or the Philippines, or wherever to solve crises, there is a lack of coherency. Oh and we've come to understand that if Corporate IT (operating out of Horsham PA), tries to do one thing they may or may not screw it up. If they try to do two things at the same time they will without fail, screw up three. It has been a strange few months there.
There are a few oddities we've come across. Zed for example. Up here the last letter of the alphabet is pronounced Zed not Zee. It really messes up the Alphabet Song. Similarly up here it aren't Scouts they are Guides. Every spring there are sales on Girl Guides cookies. Speaking of foodstuffs, in the stores here they have "Low-fat Buttermilk". Ponder that for a few minutes. We have been getting lots of Western Family Brand food products. I don't think we saw WF in Minnesota but out here it's very popular because it's very good quality and cheaper than the name brands. Actually we buy a lot of our food in the bulk aisle. In the stores not only do they have the usual flour and nuts in the bulk aisle, they have other things. Cookie, bread, and muffin mixes, tea bags, and peanut butter, just about everything we are looking for we can find in bulk for a lot less. The bulk items are great because food, especially cheese, is actually rather expensive up here. Not all of our food comes from the store though. Marsha has found she really likes picking things and putting up food for the winter. Rhubarb, blackberries, and apples all were picked packed and frozen for future use. It was the reason the first major purchase we got for the new house was a chest freezer. We are now planning on planting foodstuffs in the yard. Zucchini, squash, cucumbers, and who knows what else. We'll have fun filling the freezer this fall, maybe we'll even try canning some of it. Continuing with the shopping theme, one of the most surprising things we've seen is a place called Zellers. Zellers is just a big box Department Store. When we walked in though, we thought we were at Target. The layout, the color scheme, the feel of the place, the uniforms, all screams Target. But it's Zellers and that means that in addition to the usual clothing, electronics, food, and pharmaceuticals, you can also get a stove or refrigerator.
We have learned that BC is HUGE. BC covers 364,764 square miles. For comparison Texas covers 268,820 square miles and Minnesota covers 87,014 square miles. BC runs all the way up to the Yukon and Alaska. Vancouver Island alone is roughly as long as the distance from Seattle to Eugene, Oregon, or Minneapolis to Milwaukee. We'll be exploring BC for many years to come.
Finally a few random items from around here. One morning it was snowing, no more than what we'd call a shower, and someone at work called it "a blizzard'. It's all in your point of view and Nanaimo doesn't get much snow. Also one day Marsha was shocked to see me go outside to mow the lawn in cut-offs. I never wore shorts in Minnesota, back there I was afraid of the snapping turtles. There also was the time Geiger brought Marsha a present, a nice live snake and then insisted on standing guard over it until Marsha accepted it. She was not amused but I was. Marsha finally picked up Geiger and carried him elsewhere while I rescued the snake and returned it to the blackberry bushes. Lastly this is a land where the garbage-men are finicky as to what they pick up and curbside recycling will take absolutely anything you put out, except that is for clear glass jars. Why? No one seems to know.
So that's what the last year has been like. We laugh more, spend more time doing odd projects, and walk in the park more than we did prior to the move. We'll keep you all in the loop as to new events. We have a few things in mind for the coming year. We're starting to look at the 2009 Eclipse Trip. We're both hunting for other jobs. Mostly though we're just sitting back and enjoying being here and being together.